


An Efficacious Remedy

by Petra



Category: Cranford (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2012-12-12
Packaged: 2017-11-20 22:38:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/590430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary Smith's renewed acquaintance with Dr Marshland alleviates pains that he has inadvertently caused and helps her see a brighter future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Efficacious Remedy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leidolette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/gifts).



Dr Marshland's first visit to Cranford after his good friend Dr Harrison was married was not his last, nor was it the last time I was to see him. We met in the street and nodded as one does in Cranford--at least, if one wishes to avoid becoming the latest subject of Miss Pole's news to all and sundry. He asked if he might call upon me, and if I were staying with Miss Matilda Jenkyns as I had previously.

I could not meet his eyes at first, as I had yet to comprehend the entirety of the wrong he had done Dr Harrison that February. In another town, perhaps it would not have seemed so grave; a boyish prank perpetrated by one who ought to have been a man, but one easily forgiven.

Perhaps he had that he had written those wicked Valentine cards, but Cranford had not. Despite the passing months and Dr Harrison's wedding to Miss Hutton, the whispers still went round the town when the new Mrs Harrison let slip that she and her husband were expecting a guest. It was not entirely Dr Marshland's fault that few things of catastrophic consequence had occurred since he made his foolish game. For my part, I had decided to treat him merely as a doctor, and so I spoke with him in front of Johnson's store: "Dr Marshland, I am not at home to visitors, but I have been having trouble with my glasses of late. If I could beg your assistance with them, I would be most grateful."

How his smile cut to my heart. He had not sent me any Valentine, to be sure, nor any notes begging for my affection since we had last met at Dr Harrison's wedding party. Yet there was something in his gaze that made me wish I had written to him however many times it would have taken to come to a form of friendship with him, despite his sport with the hearts of half the single women of Cranford.

Caroline Tomkinson, to be sure, had formed her understanding with the butcher since then, and Mrs Rose was keeping house for Dr Morgan. Neither of them held the least bit of anger against Dr Harrison--though what they might have said, had they seen me addressing the least kindness to Dr Marshland, I could not guess. Cranford's anger, once riled, was slow to cool, and I did not care to have the spirit of the town against me while my stepmother faced a confinement within a matter of weeks. 

Miss Matty's tea shop was doing a brisk business in both Assam and gossip as I returned from Johnson's and my encounter with the visiting doctor, for Mrs Forrester and Miss Pole were both there. Miss Pole's latest news concerned a man who wanted to sell her a dog. "And where I should keep a dog in my house, I don't know," she said to Miss Matty as I entered, only giving me a nod of the head a moment later. "Why, we had a dog when I was a girl. It ate my best boots and my father was furious. My mother told him, 'It's only a dog doing as dogs do,' but that wouldn't soften his heart toward the brute. I don't know what I would do if I were to acquire a similarly fierce creature."

"Perhaps it would be like Mrs Jamieson's little Carlo," Mrs Forrester said. "She dotes on him so."

Miss Matty creased the packaging of the tea Miss Pole had bought. It seemed hardly enough to make two cups, and if Miss Pole always purchased such small amounts she was surely costing Miss Matty dearly in the proper sort of paper. Miss Matty would never complain of such a thing, especially not as it meant her friends had a reason to call daily in her shop and make it seem a lively and friendly place. "I cannot imagine having a dog," she said. "Dear Deborah would never have countenanced such a creature, and it would seem an affront to her memory to allow one. Though Mrs Hearne has said she might like one, or her husband would, to have around the house and keep out the rats. I have a horror of rats."

"A dog is little better than a rat, my dear," Miss Pole said, taking her tea and paying Miss Matty without remarking on the transaction directly. "Not if you have one as rapacious as the one I knew in my girlhood."

"Perhaps a cat," said Mrs Forrester. "Though for the best companionship, I cannot recommend a cow too highly."

Miss Matty smiled at Mrs Forrester, but beyond that she did not comment. Like everyone else who had passed through the neighborhood in the notable days, I could not think of cows without recalling Mrs Forrester's pajama-clad Bessie. I was hard-pressed to keep my smile hidden from the good ladies, as I did not have Miss Matty's polite reserve. I should not have been able to meet Mrs Forrester's eye without laughing, even months since the incident. Like the town's anger, its gaiety was slow to fade.

"If Mrs Hearne were to keep a cow, you might have the freshest milk imaginable to accompany the tea," said Miss Pole.

Miss Matty's smile faded slightly, and I spoke before she was forced to explain her delicacy of taste to Miss Pole. "That might cause some difficulty in transportation," I pointed out. "Miss Matty has no trouble in sending packets of tea out the door, but where would she find the buckets or bottles to spare for that much milk?"

"Ah," said Miss Pole, brought up short. "Quite. Thank you, Miss Smith, Miss Matty, I will be off now. I must pay a call to Mrs Jamieson, you see."

"Fare well," said Mrs Forrester.

"Do give her my best wishes," said Miss Matty, and the ladies went out. She shook her head at her shop, empty but for me. "I could never bear to sell milk, Mary. If Jem Hearne milked the cow on my behalf, perhaps I could stand it, but what if he took ill?"

"Not to worry, Miss Matty. It is only Mrs Forrester's great fondness for kine that makes her suggest them, and we cannot all love the same creatures."

"No, indeed. I suppose Deborah would not have objected to a cat, and if a mouse were to get into the shop it would do the most frightful damage."

A cat seemed precisely the sort of animal that would suit Miss Matty, at least if she found a friendly one. The way she dandled little James Hearne, I often thought she ached for something of her own to hold, but I should never say so to her. "There are sure to be kittens on one of the nearby farms. Would you like me to inquire?"

"That would be splendid, yes."

That very day, Dr Marshland came during the hours prescribed for calls in Cranford. Mrs Hearne, whom I had a deal of trouble not thinking of as "Martha," popped her head into the sitting room where I was reading and said, "The doctor for you, Miss Smith."

"Thank you, Mrs Hearne. Could you fetch us some tea?" I said, but I had barely a moment to say it in before Dr Marshland was in Miss Matty's sitting room, looking as tall and handsome as ever. I greeted him with a respectful nod, and he nodded in return.

"How is your health, Miss Smith, and Miss Matty's?"

"Tolerably well, Doctor, and yours?"

"Very fine. Mrs Harrison will have me looking for new shirts before I leave Cranford, but only from the fine dinners she provides. But you said your eyes were bothering you."

He looked at me as though he might repeat his diagnostic miracle and find the fault in my glasses merely by studying my face and the angle at which I held my head. I hoped that he could do no such thing, as there was no particular trouble with the glasses he had ordered made for me, except that they made my nose ache when I wore them too long. "It is more that the mechanism is imperfect." I removed the glasses and handed them to him, then showed him the bright patches of skin on my nose where they sat. "I worry I shall grow callouses under the frames."

Dr Marshland's laugh was ever infectious, no matter how foolish some of his japes had been. "Not unless you're popping them on and off a thousand times a day, I shouldn't think. But if you'd turn toward the light, I'll have a look."

His fingers were delicate on my face as a butterfly's feet. He traced the spots on my nose where the glasses had irritated my skin and sucked his teeth in thought, much as Miss Pole would have if I faced her with the same dilemma. "Just a moment more," he said, and ran his fingers along my temples, where the arms of the glasses reached back to my ears. "No soreness here?"

His face was mere inches from mine. The last house he'd visited must have had a servant more dedicated to serving than to caring for her child than Martha was, for his breath smelled of tea and we had not tended to him yet, in the house that surely had the most tea in all Cranford. "That doesn't hurt, no," I said.

He nodded slightly, his mouth quirking at the corner. I thought for one dreadful moment that he knew I had invented my malady in order to have a polite reason to speak with him, but he did not mock me. "If you need a different padding on your glasses, perhaps you might try pads of felt. I see you've been wearing them regularly."

I could not recall any time when he'd told me not to do so. "Whenever I need them, yes. Should I stop?"

"No, no, not at all." Dr Marshland gave me the glasses back, and I put them on. His face, still closer to mine than propriety would dictate, came into focus anew. "Some of my colleagues might tell you that you should mind how much time you spend at your reading, but I think they're all fools. Read as much as you like, so long as you've enough light."

"Thank you." I expected him to back away any moment.

He did not.

He hesitated another breath, two breaths, and said, "Might I write to you again? Or call upon you when you are at home in Manchester?"

I could only imagine the joy it would give my stepmother to know that a young doctor was interested in calling on me, perhaps courting me. She would be beside herself with it, and would not give me a moment's peace if I maintained my earlier feelings about Dr Marshland in light of his propensity for foolery. The sort of misunderstanding that had caught Dr Harrison was not like to happen in Manchester, where something more than a teasing note was required as proof of affection before marriage was contemplated. She had not spent half enough time in Cranford to understand what a jewel it was, how preserved from the passage of time. "I will need to consider your request," I said.

Mrs Hearne said, "Tea, Miss Smith, Dr Marshland," from the doorway of the sitting room. I did not leap backward from him, for if I had that would have been as good as an admission that we were closer than anyone ought to be. Doctors were allowed some leeway in that respect, at least in the course of their duty.

Dr Marshland cleared his throat and said in the best professional manner one could ask of him, "Your nose should heal soon, Miss Smith, with the appropriate tincture. I will write you up a receipt for it, and I advise you to look into the felt."

"Thank you, Doctor."

We did not meet again before he left the town, but Dr Marshland wrote to me before I left Cranford, asking leave to write to me when I returned to Manchester, if I would furnish him with my precise direction. "There are so many Smiths," he wrote in his spotted, meandering hand. "But of all of them, you are the one I would wish to call upon, with due permission."

I answered him from Manchester so that I would not have the postmaster of Cranford speaking to anyone else of my renewed correspondence with "that doctor what stirred up all that trouble with dear Dr Harrison."

The letter read:

My esteemed Dr Marshland,

Due to my stepmother's recent blessing of a son, we are not receiving visitors for another month, as she is not in a fit state for visitors other than her own doctor and barely entertains my siblings. Moreover, if you write to me at this address, your missives will be the object of much commentary, not all of it flattering. My father sets great stock in the quality of a man's handwriting.

If you take some care to write more neatly, perhaps he would permit you to call once my stepmother's health improves and my brother is of an age that he can be left with a nurse. 

I had occasion to visit Mrs Harrison before I departed from Cranford. She spoke most highly of you as a house guest, which I am sure you had no cause to expect of her considering your treatment of her before her marriage. She was quick to tell me of your expertise in herbs, which seemed a strange specialty for a doctor.

Your receipt for the nose-poultice did admirably well, as has the felt padding I added to my glasses. Surely the hospitals of London do not train you in such rural remedies? 

If you have any recommendations for soothing babies with a tendency to weep in the middle of the night, you will forever endear yourself to my stepmother--and to the rest of the household besides. My youngest brother, while as lovely a child as any could be at her tender age, barely sleeps more than ten minutes together without wailing. 

At those times I rather wish I were still in Cranford, where matters are never quiet but are rarely so voluble. Miss Matilda Jenkyns' lodgers' child was a poor trade for my own brother in that regard, as the sweet one was already sleeping through the night when I made his acquaintance.

Do bring your expertise to bear on the situation as soon as you can. My stepmother's doctor is quite at a loss as to what to do for the babe, and the rest of us near our wits' end with the noise. I would consider it a great kindness fit to erase any number of memories of past wrongs.

Your friend,  
Mary Smith

It seemed that no sooner had I sent the letter than Dr Marshland was at the doorstep, carrying a bag that smelled to Heaven of assorted herbs I could not name when their scents tangled together so. In truth, it must have been two days before he called, the barest interval to receive the letter, accumulate the appropriate plants, and locate our address.

When he was announced, I met him with my coolest, "Dr Marshland," in hopes that he would remember himself all through the visit and not embarrass either of us with flirtation. He could surely hear my littlest sibling weeping in the nursery even as he entered the house.

"Miss Smith," he said, and bowed, removing his hat but making no move to so much as shake my hand.

That disappointed me, pragmatic though it was. One of my little sisters was looking on and she would tell her mama every detail of our interactions, at least if they were longer or more intimate than they needed to be. "Thank you for coming so promptly. Let me show you to the nursery."

The nursery was an airy white room, and my stepmother had set herself up as queen of it with little apparent awareness that she was beyond the appropriate time for confinement and should be taking on the care of her older children as well as the infant. Her hair escaped from under a cap and she wore a sleeping gown as well as a robe. "This is Dr Marshland, Mother," I said to her, and completed the introduction, "Mrs Smith, Dr Marshland."

She held her tongue against the traditional reprimand that I was not to call her "Mother" due to our close ages, and merely looked from the red-faced baby, gathering breath for another series of cries that would rend the heart of anyone unlucky enough to be within earshot, to the doctor. I had warned her that his specialty lay in eyes, not in babies, but she could not meet a medical man without inquiring of him for assistance in raising her ever more numerous children. "How do you do, sir," she said, and was interrupted by howling partway through. "Oh, Mary, could you?" She held out the squalling child to me, and I was left with the choice to take him or allow him to drop to the floor.

I would have rather escaped the room to some form of quiet and left Dr Marshland to tend to the babe without my assistance. Instead, I found myself supporting the boy's head while the doctor examined him, ever so close to me.

It was less disagreeable than I would have deemed it had anyone inquired of me before I stood with him, even including the wailing infant. Dr Marshland had a faint smell of lavender about him, and he tested the little lad's grip with a kind finger. "I think we can safely say there's nothing wrong with his lungs," he said, raising his voice that I might hear his wit and appreciate it.

If the little one carried on much longer at that volume, I was like to have trouble with my ears as well as my eyes, but I did not say so to Dr Marshland. "I think he's breathing terribly well, yes."

"May I?" He took the baby from me and held him with a facility that belied his focused practice. Either he had spent more time than he had ever admitted to me helping children heal, or he came from a large family.

Whatever the cause, he held my brother with the ease of someone who was well used to being shouted at, and clucked to him in a voice that the child could not have heard. Something in it caught the babe's attention and he fell blessedly silent after a few hiccoughs, staring up at the doctor's face. I was hard pressed not to applaud, but I feared that if I did so I would disturb the fragile peace. I constrained myself to a quiet, "Well done," that barely arrested the doctor as he examined my brother.

The tender way he moved the boy, careful of him and of his tiny limbs, made me unaccountably jealous of the child, as if I wanted to be dandled so. I did not, or at least not in the way that one dealt with a baby. If Dr Marshland were capable of such caution and precision with people nearer his own age, that would be a different matter entirely.

After some time, he informed my stepmother that the boy appeared to have some trouble with one of his ears, and that keeping it warm would help it to drain as needed.

She took the baby back and called for the maid to stoke the fire as high as might be achieved. "Thank you, Doctor, thank you. Won't you take a cup of tea? I believe you know our Mary from visits to Cranford. Such a dear place."

We had detained him long enough and more than that, I was sure, for one tiny ear in need of a fire, and my stepmother liked Cranford not at all. It was my mother's home, and it had some of my father's heart for that reason. She could not have been clearer in her intent had she handed the two of us the family Bible and asked him to inscribe his name beside mine.

"I would be most grateful for a cup, Mrs Smith," said Dr Marshland before I could find a proper excuse.

"Mary, dear, do show the doctor downstairs."

I was no maid to do her bidding, but neither was I in any position to argue with her. It was simplest to allow Dr Marshland to follow me down the stairs and into the sitting room while I called for two cups of tea. "Thank you," I said, and glanced meaningfully upward. "He can be a trial."

"Any babe can when he's not feeling his best." Dr Marshland sat on one of the chairs a moment after I did, a twinkle in his eyes as if he knew that the biggest trial of all was my stepmother. "Is your nose feeling better at all?"

"Yes, thank you." I did not remove my glasses to show him, as there was nothing to see but a lack of abrasion. My nose looked like any other nose and could not have held his attention.

"And your eyes?" He looked at me for such a long moment I felt sure he had noticed something wrong with them, though I had not.

"I thought they were well enough," I said, hesitating over the words and giving him every opportunity to interrupt me.

He was quiet for a breath. "I have made mistakes, Miss Smith, and I hope I have atoned for them enough that you will permit me to call upon you again."

"Of course, if my brother is that ill," I began, but Dr Marshland shook his head.

"Not as a doctor, or not merely so." He sat forward on his chair as if he wanted to reach for my hand, but did not dare. There was very little I believed he would not dare, given the proper encouragement, but he looked away from me as he asked, "Have you forgiven me enough that I might court you?"

Courting was not quite an understanding, and an understanding was not marriage; if he erred again as greatly as he had with the Valentines, I would see him off and never speak his name again. But there was a joy in him when he spoke to friends, a sweetness when he held my brother, that made my heart ache to be near him. "Yes," I said, and reached for his hand to seal the deal.

He drew me to my feet, barely touching my hand, and kissed me. I was still in the midst of kissing him back, wondering if all his kisses were as heady, when my stepmother said, "Oh," behind me, in a most pleased voice, and the door closed.

In a better class of household, or one where the lady of the house had more hope of wedding off her daughter, she might have closed herself into the room with us. As it was, I could tell from her loud steps in the hall that she had left us alone. Dr Marshland laughed against my mouth, his infectious laugh that made me want to exult with him. "So I meet with her approval too?"

"You would meet with her approval if you were sixty and hunchbacked, so long as you were willing to put forth an honest suit for my hand. I greatly prefer you as you are." I kissed him again, testing the efficacy of his lips, and found them as splendid as the first encounter, if not more so.

The house was hushed until Dr Marshland took his leave some minutes later, having promised to call again. Then my stepmother summoned me to the nursery and bade me tell her everything I knew of him.

I omitted to mention the Valentines.

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to my beta Isiscolo.


End file.
